Publicly and privately administered parking programs continually struggle with the seemingly intractable problem of providing parking services for an area having a limited number of parking spaces to an ever increasing number of vehicles. Specifically, there is an increasing effort to manage the problem in residential communities, where cities and towns attempt to provide the local residents with a place to park. This effort generally involves the use of parking programs designed to enforce a set of rules and regulations governing parking privileges in a particular area or zone.
Traditional parking programs require enforcement of the governing parking laws and regulations by a number of enforcement agents, referred to as Parking Enforcement Officers (PEO). The PEOs monitor an area and detect parking violations, generally by visual inspection of the offending vehicles (e.g., identification of an unlawfully parked vehicle) or surrounding area (e.g., observing a vehicle position in front of a “no parking” sign, an expired parking meter, etc.)
Still other parking programs use permits to regulate and restrict parking privileges in an attempt to assure residents that the local residents are able to find a place to park their vehicles on a street or in a lot. The goal of such permit-based parking programs is to encourage persons to obtain a permit for parking privileges, or, alternatively, move non-permit holder vehicles, to metered, time-limited, or garage parking.
However, parking programs are very difficult and expensive to implement and manage. Inefficiencies in the administration of these parking programs and a lack of enforcement of the regulations are rampant problems facing today's parking programs, leading to a significant dilution in the intended benefits.
For example, a small municipality that institutes a permit-based parking program may face the task of issuing from 20,000 to 500,000 permits per year, which requires a complete overhaul of the municipality's existing parking regulation enforcement plan.
While the issuance of permits assists in the institution of parking regulations, use of conventional permits includes many disadvantages. Conventional permits are typically embodied as a sticker that either affixes to a window of the vehicle or a hang-tag that hangs within the vehicle (i.e., from the rear view mirror). However, it is often difficult to determine if a permit is present based on a visual inspection of the vehicle, due to a variety of factors including the presence of tinted windows and/or the arrangement of the vehicle (e.g., angled parking). This creates a significant burden on the individual responsible for inspecting vehicle to determine if the vehicle is legally parked, referred to as a Parking Enforcement Officer (PEO), who must locate and read the permit via a visual inspection of the vehicle.
In addition, conventional permits are frequently stolen or “scalped” (i.e., sold by the authorized permit holder to an unauthorized person). With no efficient means to track the permits administered under a parking program, such misuse is extremely difficult to detect and terminate.
In order to enforce vehicular parking laws, parking programs typically issue a ticket or summons and place the summons on the vehicle. Generally, the owner and/or operator of the vehicle reviews the summons, and is required to inquire as to the amount of the fine and the method of satisfaction. Next, the owner/operator takes steps to pay the fine and/or appear in court to contest the summons. The enforcement of the payment of the fines is haphazard in that in many instances the vehicle owner does not pay the fine and accumulates summons and fines. The fines assessed may be increased substantially for repeat violators who are termed scofflaws, who ignore such summons.
One conventional method to insure payment of fines is to immobilize the vehicle by placing a boot on the vehicle wheel. A boot is a device which is attached to the vehicle wheel to make operation of the vehicle impossible since the wheel is no longer able to roll on the pavement due to the presence of the boot. However, such boots are typically cumbersome and heavy. For example, such boots are disclosed in Japanese patent JP 58076348, UK design patents 3008370 and 3007353, and U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,489,272; 1,530,622: 3,907,072; 4,768,359; 5,134,868; 5,315,848; 5,372,018; and 5,673,574, all incorporated by reference herein in their entirety.
Boot systems of the type in use, while unpopular with motorists, have become more accepted. Thus, parking enforcement personnel place the oversize and cumbersome boot on a vehicle wheel, immobilizing the vehicle. The offender returns to the vehicle and can not use the vehicle. The offender is prompted by a sticker on the window to call the appropriate entity (e.g., a law enforcement agency) in order to obtain instructions on how to release and remove the boot. The offender is prompted during the call to make his or her way to the police station, court or administrator, without his vehicle, to a payment location. The offender is required to pay the fine for this violation and all other outstanding violations, if any. In this regard, boot systems provide for catching scofflaws who have numerous outstanding parking violations. More specifically, once a boot is attached to a scofflaw's vehicle, the authorities can maintain control of the vehicle until all outstanding violations against the owner or operator of the vehicle are paid.
Clearly, the use of the boot wheel lock is inconvenient to the offender who must try to obtain alternative transportation from whatever location he may have parked to the payment center, which could be some distance away and to which center there is no readily available transportation. Once the offender's account is settled, he or she must return to his vehicle seeking further transportation, while in parallel to the offender returning to his vehicle, to await a parking enforcement person to remove the boot. Such a person may or may not arrive at the offending vehicle in a timely manner, frustrating the offender. This process can take hours or even days, using up a portion of the collected fine by the summons issuing agency via the man hours spent in arranging for the removal of the boot and in the time necessary for removing the boot and also leaving a very disgruntled citizen.
Furthermore, it is costly for both the motorist and the agency responsible for enforcement of the traffic laws. In some cases, the boot is used in lieu of towing on private property to insure payment of parking violation fines. The tow operator may not get to the private parking facility for hours to settle the claim.
Therefore, there is a need for a method and a system for efficiently and effectively implementing, managing, administering, monitoring, and executing a parking program.